Evolutionist Mark Pallen asks “Is it possible to be a rationalist (a believer in the laws of logic) but not believe in evolution?” Pallen’s answers is “no,” which seems almost correct. Evolution arose from religious rationalism and today dominates rationalist thought. Can you find a rationalist who does not believe in evolution?
Unfortunately the Professor’s thinking is all downhill from there. In fact the parenthetical—where Pallen equates rationalists with believers in the laws of logic—is a dead give away of problems to come. It is true that rationalism draws heavily on logic, but this is hardly a distinctive of rationalism.
While it is good to see evolutionists acknowledge the inherent rationalism within their thinking, they also need to understand what this really means. Pallen later ridicules philosophers in what is all too common in the literature. Evolutionists present their sophomoric reasonings and then take a swipe at those from whom they should be seeking counsel.
Rationalism, empiricism and the Kalman filter
Rationalism is a style of reasoning that emphasizes axioms and preconceptions whereas empiricism focuses on observations. A good analogy is the Kalman filter which combines both a preconceived formula and measured data. Imagine a radar that tracks an aircraft flying overhead. The radar observations are used along with equations of how aircraft fly in the Kalman filter.
And the filter has a knob that controls its behavior. You can tell the filter to follow the data closely and ignore the equations of flight. This is like extreme empiricism. On the other hand you can tell the filter to follow the equations of flight closely and ignore the data. This setting—affectionately known as the “Oblivious Filter”—is like extreme rationalism.
Most scientists operate somewhere in between in the Happy Medium zone where theory and evidence are combined using common sense. Evolutionary thought, on the other hand, is in the Oblivious Filter zone. It doesn’t matter how many predictions are contradicted, evolution must be a fact. Evidence does not affect the fact of evolution.
The mother of all false dichotomies
And so Professor Pallen, like all evolutionists, believes there is only one way to deny the fact of evolution. The only escape is through Berkeley’s eighteenth century trap door that leads into the matrix. All of reality is just inside our heads, or maybe inside some computer somewhere in another reality.
Pallen walks his patient readers through such bizarre notions as though they are the only alternatives to evolution. In the mother of all false dichotomies, either evolution is true or everything must be a dream.
But this is standard evolutionary reasoning. A professor once explained to me that it’s either evolution or else there must be a grand cosmic conspiracy of deception. So this is the evolutionist’s absurd dichotomy: either the world just happened to arise all by itself or the world is a fiction.
Evolution is the result of religious rationalism and it is truly astonishing to see where it leads. Religion drives science and it matters.